Seroprevalence of canine herpesvirus-1 in Turkish dog population

Abstract

Canine herpesvirus-1 (CHV-1) is the agent of reproductive and respiratory disorders in adult dogs, and the infection generally results in haemorrhagic disease conditions and neonatal death. In this study, virus neutralisation test that used complement (VNT) as well as in-house ELISA were utilised to investigate the CHV-1 seroprevalence in the Turkish dog population. Among the 560 serum samples, 39.3% of the samples tested by ELISA were CHV-1 positive while 29.4% of the samples tested by VNT were CHV-1 positive. Compared to the individual dogs (39.0%), there was a higher CHV-1 seroprevalence (62.1%) found in the colony dogs (62.1%) ( p = 0.0002). However, there was an insignificant difference between male and female dogs. Although the highest antibody prevalence (56.7%) was found in Golden Retrievers, there were no significant variations detected among the dog breeds used in this study. Neutralizing antibody titres were very low (⩽1:16) in a high portion of the tested animals, confirming the rapid decrease of CHV-1 antibodies after the course of infection. The results of this study show that CHV-1 seroprevalence is moderately high in the Turkish dog population.